«Me, I hear you got 'nough trouble wit' dat Perret boy and dat big ugly son Willis,» Pepper said, rocking back on the hind legs of his lawn chair. His light eyes sparkled like aquamarines in his dark face.

Lucky scowled at him. «Where'd you hear that?»

«Me, I heard dat wit' my ears, I did.» The old man chuckled at his little joke, not heeding Lucky's ferocious glare in the least.

«Yeah, well, you keep your ears out of it or they might just get shot off.»

The end of his warning was punctuated by the sound of the screen door slapping shut, the soft «pop» sounding like a toy gun. Serena made her way across the small gallery, trying to concentrate on the steam rising from her coffee instead of the conversation she'd heard plainly through the screen while she'd been inside.

«Are you going to make this easier on all of us and explain to me what's going on, Gifford?» she said, lowering herself carefully to sit on the top step.

Gifford looked down at her and frowned. «Shouldn't have to be giving you an update like some kind of goddamned foreign correspondent.»

Serena sighed heavily, feeling too exhausted to even bring her cup to her lips so she could draw on the amazing elixir that was Pepper Fontenot's coffee. «Gifford, please. You've made your opinion of my life abundantly clear. Yes, I'm living miles away. People do that, you know. They grow up, they move on, they make their own lives.»

«You've got no sense of tradition.»

«I won't be a slave to it, if that's what you mean. I appreciate the history of Chanson du Terre, but I'm not going to become a planter to keep it going. Shelby is the one who always planned to carry on the tradition in one way or another. My career has taken me elsewhere. That doesn't mean I don't care about Chanson du Terre or you. I love you both,» she said, looking up at him with fierce earnestness in her wide dark eyes. «Is that the confession you were looking for? Are you happy now?»

«Hardly,» the old man grumbled. Still, he backed up a step and sat down beside her. «If you cared about the place, things would never have come to this.»

«And just what is 'this'? What's going on?»

He hesitated a long time, considering and discarding options. Serena didn't rush him, but sat patiently, sipping her coffee. Finally, he heaved a sigh and plowed a hand through his white hair, leaving short strands standing on end.

«Some hotshot political people have got it into their puddin' heads Mason Talbot is destined for political stardom. They want him to run for the legislature next year. He's just pretty enough and stupid enough to get elected too. He'll make a nice little puppet for the oil kingpins. His daddy may have lost his fortune in the bust, but he hasn't lost any of his connections. I'm sure old John Talbot would love to have a son in the governor's mansion one day.»

«Mason running for office,» Serena murmured, a troubled frown drawing her brows together. «I can't believe Shelby didn't mention it to me.»

«Seems to me there's quite a few things Shelby didn't mention to you, chere» Lucky commented darkly.

Serena shot him a look of annoyance and turned back to Gifford. «I don't see what this has to do with Chanson du Terre.»

«Think about it, Serena. Shelby has her heart set on Mason going to Baton Rouge. They won't need the plantation. The state the place is in right now, all it is is a liability. But if I were to sell it now and advance her her inheritance, that would give Mason enough money to buy his way into any office he wanted.

«Everybody knows it's advertising wins elections nowadays. Plaster Mason's pretty face on billboards, on television, on the sides of buses, nobody's gonna care that he's got cotton for brains.»

Serena felt compelled to stick up for her absent brother-in-law. She had always liked Mason. He was too laid-back for Gifford's taste and he might have been more fluff than substance, but he had a good heart. «Mason has got more than cotton for brains. He graduated from law school fifth in his class.»

Gifford gave a snort that eloquently spoke of his regard for lawyers in general. «Don't mean he's got a lick of sense. All it means to me is he has a nose for loopholes and technicalities. Hell, that hound over there can sniff out a coon fast as dammit, but that don't mean he's Einstein.»

It was pointless to argue with him, and they had gotten off the most important topic, so Serena steered them back with effort. «You said yesterday you'd mentioned something to Shelby about selling. Why would you do that if you don't want to sell?»

He scowled at his boots and looked uncomfortable. When he spoke, it was as grudgingly as a schoolboy owning up to sticking gum on his teachers chair. «Hell, I was just makin' noise. We've been having a rough spot here-cane smut last year, too much rain this spring, production costs are up, that damned gas tax gets us coming and going. I was just grumbling is all, trying to see if I might raise a little interest in Shelby for something besides redecorating the house while she's staying in it. So I say over dinner one night, 'By God, if all I'm gonna do is work myself to death on this place so some stranger can come in and take over, I might as well sell it and go to Tahiti.' Faster than I could spit and whistle, she had a Tristar rep nosing around the place.»

Serena frowned as she listened. It had seemed unlikely to her that Shelby would want to sell Chanson du Terre, if not because of a sense of tradition, because it had always represented status in the community-something Shelby prized almost above all else. But if she had set her sights on an even higher plateau and saw selling the place as a means of achieving that end, that was a different story. Shelby's talent for rationalization was unsurpassed in Serena's experience.

«Why Tristar Chemical?» she asked.

Gifford shrugged wearily. «I don't know. There's probably some connection through Mason's family. How else would she have found a buyer at all? Since the oil bust, the market down here is soft as butter. Shelby couldn't sell igloos to Eskimos to begin with. Mason only let her have that office space downtown to placate her. You know I love her, but she's a silly little thing and always has been. The only reason she went into real estate was so she could dress up, look important, and go to the chamber of commerce meetings.»

«So you don't want to sell the place,» Serena said, uncomfortable with the topic of her twin. «Tell the Tristar people no and be done with it.»

«They don't take no for an answer,» he grumbled. «That damned Burke is like a pit bull. I can't shake him for love or money.»

Serena fixed her grandfather with the stern look she'd learned from him. «Gifford Sheridan, in all my life I've never known you to back down from a fight.»

He frowned at her. His square chin came up a notch. «I'm not backing down from a fight.»

«Then what are you doing out here?» she asked, exasperated.

He raised his head another proud inch, looking as stubborn and immovable as the faces on Mount Rush-more. «I'm dealing with it my own way.»

They were back to square one. Serena squeezed her eyes shut for a second and concentrated on the needle of pain stabbing through her head. She took a sip of coffee, hoping in vain that the caffeine would bring her energy level up. Instead, it churned like acid in her stomach and made her feel even hotter and more uncomfortable than she had been to begin with.

Of course, Gifford's obstinance wasn't helping. Nor was having Lucky's steady gaze fastened on her. He stood at the foot of the steps, staring at her through the opaque lenses of his sunglasses, an unnerving experience in the best of circumstances. The only thing that might have made it worse was if he hadn't been wearing the glasses. She couldn't think of anything more disturbing than the heat and intensity of those amber eyes.